Adolescent Emotional Development

Adolescence is marked by changes that are relatively brief and not typically associated with long-term adjustment problems (Graber & Brooks-Gunn, 1996; Steinberg, 1999). The normative timing of these changes has just begun to be more clearly established and most of these tend to occur at the onset of adolescence. First, there are relatively sudden changes in both positively- and negatively-valenced affect. The intensity and/or frequency of negative emotion peaks in early adolescence (Larson & Lampman-Petraitis, 1989; Larson, et al., 2002). Young adolescents also experience less positive emotions (Larson & Richards, 1994; Larson, Richards, Moneta, Holmbeck, & Duckett, 1996). Second, the emotional landscape of a young adolescent becomes complex not just with an increase in emotional intensity but with a comprehension of mixed emotions as well (Harter & Buddin, 1987). Third, there are dramatic changes of mood. Most significantly, the incidence of dysphoric or depressed moods radically increases, especially for girls (Dahl, 2001; Petersen, Sarigiani, & Kennedy, 1991; Stice, Presnell, & Bearman, 2001). Fourth, the social aspects of emotion expression and regulation become more developed. For example, there are increases in the ability to mask emotions (Rosenblum & Lewis, 2003) as well as in the use of emotion to manage relationships (Saarni, 1999). Fifth, the social referencing aspects of emotion become highly attuned. In early adolescence, there is sharp increase in the awareness of other’s perceptions of the self, and therefore shame (Rosenblum & Lewis, 2003), as well as more daily fluctuations in self-esteem (Alsaker & Olweus, 1992). Sixth, there is some evidence that adolescents are more “moody” or variable in their emotions across the course of a day or week (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984; Larson, et al., 2002). And finally, recent work in developmental affective neuroscience suggests that adolescence begins with increased emotionality, increased sensitivity to stress, decreased sensitivity to rewards, and a lag of years before the regulatory capacities of the pre-frontal cortex become fully engaged (Dahl, 2004; Spear, 2003; Steinberg, et al., in press). This period has been metaphorically identified as “starting the engines without a skilled driver” (Dahl, 2001, p. 69).

Emotionally, there is clearly quite a bit of change occurring in early adolescence. What is not entirely clear is how much of this change is specific to alterations in emotion or emotion regulation systems and how much is a response to a more general set of changes in several other domains at the same time. Early adolescence is also marked by changes in the cognitive, biological, neural, and social domains that could have a tremendous impact on emotional development. Indeed, adolescence has frequently been described with words like “re-organization,” “realignment,” “redefinition,” “disequillibration,” and “flux” (Cicchetti & Rogosh, 2002; Collins, 1990; Larson, et al., 2002; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Steinberg, 1990). The transitioning adolescent suddenly experiences new ways of thinking, a new body, different sleep patterns, more negative emotions, increased emotional sensitivity, reactivity, intensity, and lability, diminished experience of rewards, higher expectations, more stressful events, greater sensitivity to stress, greater risk for psychopathology, more peer influence, and neither the regulatory capacities nor the coping skills to compensate for this barrage of novelty.

Currently, there is no comprehensive model of adolescent emotional development. Indeed, emotions and emotion regulation in adolescence are often considered simply as more mature than childhood but less mature than adulthood. However, most evidence points to adolescence as being qualitatively distinct. My interest is to develop a more coherent model of adolescent emotional development. To do so, my research will focus on tracking developmental trajectories of emotion-related behaviour from late childhood through adolescence. Through this work, I expect to be able to provide a theoretical account of the emotional processes undergoing change across this critical developmental period.